


All the Unhealthy and Over-Darkened Ways

by kingess



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-19 00:35:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2367746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingess/pseuds/kingess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan stumbles across a proana blog</p><p>Written for this prompt: [<a href="http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/14280.html?thread=14069704#t14069704">X</a>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Unhealthy and Over-Darkened Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, folks, HUGE trigger warnings for eating disorders and self-harm. I nearly did a number on my own head with this, so take care and be kind to yourselves.

Jehan wasn’t expecting to get a scrapbook for his birthday. It was a lovely gift from his mother—scrapbooking must be her latest empty-nester hobby—and he knew it must have taken her weeks—if not months—to carefully construct it, but it wasn’t the sort of present he wanted to open in front of his friends when they were already half-drunk and celebrating the beginning of the week long Thanksgiving vacation. His birthday was really just an excuse to have a party, but he didn’t mind. He enjoyed their company as much as they enjoyed his.

His gifts from his friends had ranged from practical (a knit hat from Feuilly) to outrageous (fuzzy handcuffs and body chocolate from Courfeyrac) to thoughtful (a first edition of Endymion that Enjolras, Combeferre, and Marius had gone in on together), but as he turned the pages of the scrapbook from his mom, the gift felt a little too personal and sentimental for this particular crowd. He closed the books, making a promise to himself to look through it later when everyone was gone, and added it to his pile of unwrapped gifts. “Give me the next one,” he said, reaching forward and grabbing at the wrapped presents that were just out of his reach.

“No, no, no,” Courfeyrac said. “I want to see pictures of baby Jehan!” And he lunged for the scrapbook.

“Don’t don’t!” Jehan said, laughing. “Some of those pictures are mortifying!”

“Exactly,” Courfeyrac said. He had the scrapbook open in his arms and Joly and Grantaire were looking at it over his shoulders. “My mom paraded all those pictures of me in the bathtub to you last time we were home. Turn about is fair play. Now budge over so I can coo how adorable my boyfriend was as a baby.”

Jehan didn’t really have a choice because in a matter of moments, Courfeyrac had plopped down on the couch and spread the book open over both their laps. The rest of their friends gathered around to look and someone pressed a beer bottle into Jehan’s hands. Good. He’d probably need it.

He tried to smile at the good-natured teasing he got from his friends at pictures of him in various embarrassing situations. He took a swig with every casual joke about what a pudgy child he’d been and he braced himself for what was coming when Courfeyrac turned the page to show the page dedicated to his eighth grade year of school.

“Shit, Jehan,” Courfeyrac said, laughing. “They just stretched you out, didn’t they?”

Jehan laughed a little and gave himself permission to look at the pictures. His mom didn’t have many pictures of him from that time of his life, but she seemed to make due with what she had. In the early part of the scrapbook, he had been short and fat. In his eighth grade pictures, he was tall and thin. Very thin. A combination of a growth spurt and an eating disorder he’d developed as a way to cope with too many different stressors left him looking like a skeleton.

In the pictures his mom used for the scrap book, he still had some meat on his bones. He looked thin, but not ill. He doubted the same could be same of pictures from ninth grade.

“You were so skinny!” Joly said.

“I hit a growth spurt,” Jehan said.

“You’re positively fat now,” Courfeyrac said. He placed his hand on Jehan’s stomach and jiggled it.

He laughed again. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Let’s all make fun of the fatty. Can I open the rest of my presents now?”

He didn’t want Courfeyrac to see the next page of pictures.

“I suppose,” Courfeyrac said, sounding like a child who’d just been denied a treat. “But I get to look at them later.”

* * *

 

Jehan forgot about the scrapbook and he forgot about the pictures and he forgot about the way his stomach jiggled under Courfeyrac’s hand for a couple of days. Thanksgiving came and went, and while he snacked on left over turkey-and-stuffing sandwiches, he set to work on a stack of short stories he had to critique for his creative writing class. Courfeyrac would be coming by later and Jehan wanted to have his work out of the way so he could enjoy the night out with his boyfriend.

He had three stories to go over before the end of the weekend, each written by a different student in his class. For this round of submissions, they’d been asked to write creative non-fiction essays. His had been a humorous piece about coming out to his friends, and others he had read had ranged from amusing to heartbreaking. He did all his critiques on a hard copy and he picked up the top essay entitled “My Old Friend Ana.”

It took him all of about three sentences to realize Ana was a reference to anorexia and he dropped the essay as though it burned him. He knew he shouldn’t read it right now—or maybe even at all. He could leave a note and explain that this struck a little too close to home for him and accept the fact that he wouldn’t get credit for critiquing her essay. It’d be fine.

But maybe he could handle it. He hadn’t had trouble with his eating for years, and maybe he could offer her a friendly, supportive voice. It must have been hard for her to write this. She must feel so nervous exposing herself like this. He knew if he were in the same situation, he’d want to feel like someone supported him and understood him. He scanned the page, looking for anything that might be too hard or too triggering for him to read, and his eyes caught the word proana.

He wasn’t familiar with the term, but it didn’t take a genius to piece it together. Proana. Pro anorexia. He set the essay aside, pulled his laptop closer to him, and typed the word proana into the search bar at the top of his browser.

The results surprised him, though he knew they shouldn’t. Pages and pages of blogs celebrating eating disorders, celebrating starvation, celebrating mental illness. He didn’t have to click on them to know. He could tell just from the descriptions google attached to each blog. He’d heard all of this before, of course. His own eating disorder had never gotten bad enough to require hospitalization, but he had gone to therapy and he had attended an outpatient support group for nearly a year. By that point, he had wanted to get better and he ignored all the whispered dieting tips and encouragement that the others whispered back and forth.

It only figured that groups of people like this existed online.

He grabbed the top of his laptop, prepared to shut the screen and block out the voices and go distract himself with poetry and tea until Courfeyrac showed up, but one of the blog titles caught his eye—A Thing of Beauty, a Keats reference—and he dropped his hand so he could click on the link.

And there were pictures and manifestos and rules—so many rules. He remembered his own rules from his youth, an endless list of eating and exercise mandates that would later inspire a dozen different poems. He clicked through the pictures and the encouragements, appalled and fascinated by the thin bodies on the screen in front of him. He used to be that thin. The pictures in his scrapbook from when he was 13, 14, 15 wouldn’t look out of place here.

They’d be praised here. People would tell him he was strong and he was beautiful.

He used to be beautiful.

No. Absolutely not. He closed the blog tab and then went into his browser history and deleted it and the record of his search.

He had dealt with those demons. Years of therapy and writing out his feelings had exorcised those demons. He didn’t need to starve himself anymore. He didn’t need to attempt to seize control over his life by obsessive dieting and exercising. He wasn’t living at home anymore and his parents weren’t constantly arguing with each other. He was no longer closeted and alone in a homophobic community. He knew now how to deal with the melancholy that occasionally crept up on him. He didn’t need to seize control over his body to cope with those things.

He was done with that part of his life.

He closed his laptop and took a deep breath. He’d go and wait for Courfeyrac and tonight he’d fall asleep in his boyfriend’s arms and in the morning, he would write about these feelings until they no longer had power over him.

Standing up, he grabbed the plate with the half-eaten sandwich on it. He frowned. He’d eaten maybe a half-dozen of them today, enjoying the leftovers his grandmother had sent him back to campus with. When he looked down, he could see his bloated gut and he remembered the way his stomach jiggled when Courfeyrac touched it.

Maybe he didn’t need to starve himself to control issues that were no longer problems, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t afford to lose some weight. Thanksgiving and the general poor eating symptomatic of all college students and the cold weather which restricted his normal exercise habits all meant that he was looking a little softer around the edges than he normally did.

He knew what he was doing. He’d be smart about it, and when he lost a few pounds, he’d return to his usual eating habits.

* * *

 

It was easier falling into his old weight loss habits than he thought it would be. The same self-discipline that helped him write every morning was easily transferred to making himself run every morning. No one noticed that he was using his pocket moleskin notebooks to keep track of what he was eating and how many calories he was consuming instead of jotting down words and turns of phrases that came to him throughout the day. He was still eating three meals—he wasn’t starving himself, after all, it was just a little dieting, this was healthy—but they were smaller meals, low in fat, high in fiber which helped with digestive health. (See? Health. He was being healthy.)

By the time he went home for the winter holidays, he’d already lost ten pounds, but no one noticed—not even Courfeyrac, who saw Jehan naked on a regular basis. Ten pounds must not be enough.

It turned out, it was even easier to restrict his eating at home. It was almost like riding a bike. Skip breakfast, drink coffee (no cream, no sugar) or green tea (good metabolic booster) instead. Largest meal—though it was more like a snack, to be honest, he was beginning to detest the feeling of a full stomach—around noon, which gave him plenty of time to burn off those calories before bed. An even smaller meal with his parents at night. Run three miles after dinner. His parents thought he ran to clear his head, not to clear his body of unused calories. Absolutely no food afterward. Water, though. Lots of water. A full glass before eating, small sips between bites while he ate. He was hungry almost all the time, but his body would adjust eventually. Hunger was just a feeling, after all. He started painting his nails again because he couldn’t eat when his nails were wet. When he was at the dinner table with his parents and his mom’s heavy, calorie heavy chowder just smelled too good he’d pinch at the fat that still clung to his belly and his thighs to remind himself why he was doing this.

He wasn’t starving himself. He didn’t have a problem. He just wanted to loose some weight. That was all.

If there was a problem, his mom would notice. She was usually hyper aware of how much he was eating or not eating. She always nagged him when she worried he wasn’t eating enough.

He even ate a cookie on New Year’s Eve. He felt disgusting afterward, but he ate it and he didn’t even puke it up afterward.

* * *

 

By the time school started back up in mid-January, he was down nearly twenty pounds from his starting weight. He was pleased with the number, but less so with his appearance. He started running twice a day—five miles each—once in the morning, once in the evening. Courfeyrac only knew about the evening run and he frowned when Jehan would get back to the apartment and not have anything to eat. Just water. Lots of water. Lovely, life-giving, zero-calorie water.

Actually, Courfeyrac was frowning at him a lot these days and Jehan could figure out why. It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t losing enough weight. He was fat. He was still eating nearly 1000 calories a day—healthy, remember, it wasn’t a problem until he was down to just a couple hundred each day—but those thousand calories were disgusting. Disgusting. Jehan stopped changing in front of Courfeyrac and when they had sex, he kept hist shirt on or he made sure the lights were off because he loved Courfeyrac and he couldn’t possibly subject his boyfriend to the horror that was his body.

So he started cutting back the calories even more. More and more water, more green tea, more chewing ice to keep his mouth occupied, more napping to make up for the lack of energy. Less carbs, less sugars, less fats. Denser foods, even though they made him feel awful and lethargic. They made him feel full. They tricked his treacherous body into thinking he’d had enough. Of course he’d had enough. He didn’t need nearly as much food as he thought he did. He kept track of everything in his moleskin notebook. There was hardly any poetry in it now, just foods and calories and just looking at it made him feel ashamed. He could do better. He knew he could do better. He’d done it before. Once, he’d been able to average 500 or fewer calories a day.

He went back to the proana blog he’d found back in November. The voices there reminded him that he was strong, that he was better than the wants and selfish demands of his body. They gave him tips and he offered some up in return. Cut your food up small and count your bites. Always put your utensils down and take a sip of water between bites. Eat low-calorie foods that have strong flavors—your body wants the taste, not the food. Rice cakes with cayenne pepper. Crackers with red pepper flakes. Get lots of sleep, your body needs the energy to stay healthy. Don’t eat off other people’s plates. Don’t nibble on things when you cook. Find things that inspired you to get to your goal weight.

Jehan didn’t have a goal weight, though, because having a goal weight would be a problem. He just wanted to lose a little weight. He just didn’t look the way he looked. Plenty of people didn’t like the way they looked.

He didn’t have a problem, he was just trying to be healthy.

* * *

 

By the end of January, his friends were starting to notice. Courfeyrac traced his protruding hip bones and his ribs with delicate fingers after sex. He didn’t say anything about them, but Jehan knew his boyfriend noticed. His boyfriend appreciated the work he was doing. Occasionally his fingers would trace lower to the old cutting scars on his thighs, as though to make sure there were no new marks. Courfeyrac didn’t have to worry, though. Jehan used to do that, used to punish himself when he lost control and binged after weeks or months of successfully cultivating perfect control over his diet. It was one of the things that made him realize that his eating habits were a problem, but his current diet wasn’t a problem. He wasn’t loosing control and binging on whatever was laying around. He didn’t need to punish himself because he was strong enough this time around. He didn’t make mistakes. He didn’t lose control. There was no need for razor blades and spilled blood.

Joly kept telling him he was looking wan and ill and started buying Jehan high calorie drinks or foods whenever they were out at the Musain together. It was easy enough to fake-drink the lattes and fat-heavy drinks and he’d tear up the cookies and muffins and pastries that Joly bought him with his fingers and pick at the crumbs, carefully counting each crumb that he put in his mouth to make sure he didn’t eat too many. He was still too fat. Joly was usually too occupied with Bossuet or Musichetta to notice when he’d brush the remaining crumbs onto the floor. He felt bad for creating a mess for the workers to clean up, but he’d feel worse if he actually ate the baked goods. He knew he would.

Bahorel began to follow Jehan into the bathroom whenever they were out together. There were lots of jokes between them about going to bathroom in packs like the girls did, but Jehan knew that Bahorel was listening to make sure he didn’t puke. Subtlety wasn’t Bahorel’s strong suit, but Jehan didn’t need to worry. He was proud of his control. He hadn’t binged since he started his diet. He was strong and cravings didn’t own him. He wasn’t a slave to his body. On days when he was particularly hungry or his cravings were particularly bad, he had a plan. More smaller meals throughout the day. Don’t be alone with food. Stay busy. Distract yourself. He didn’t binge so he didn’t need to purge. He was still in control. He went too the bathroom a lot, which meant that he and Bahorel were getting plenty of quality time, but that was mostly because he was drinking so much water. He had to pee all the time.

Grantaire developed the habit of telling him he was skin and bones—lies, Jehan knew, because he could still pinch the fat on his belly—and he and Feuilly would gently cajole him into eating something whenever they were together. It was impossible to fake-out Feuilly and Grantaire was harder to trick than Joly because, unless Enjolras was around, Grantaire was usually incredibly focused. Grantaire watched him to make sure he ate, but Grantaire also brought healthy snacks for him. No high-fat, high-sugar, high-calorie disasters. Carrot sticks and rice cakes and saltine crackers—all things Jehan would eat on his own. Grantaire usually wanted him to eat larger quantities than he was wont to do, but Jehan could compensate for that later in the day. Feuilly would make excuses to linger whenever they were eating together to make sure Jehan ate everything that was put in front of him. Feuilly and Grantaire talked and never let Jehan get a word in edge-wise so he couldn’t distract them from the way he was not eating with his words. Where Joly seemed to be trying to fatten Jehan up, Feuilly and Grantaire’s biggest concern seemed to be to make sure that Jehan was actually eating.

But of course he was eating. He didn’t have a problem. He just wanted to be thin. He wanted to be beautiful.

And he was getting there.

Enjolras and Combeferre both watched him with sharp eyes and more than once, Jehan had walked in to find Courfeyrac having a hushed conversation with his two oldest friends and he knew from the way that they quickly shut up whenever he arrived that they were talking about him. Courfeyrac was worried about him, but it was okay. Soon, soon Jehan would be thin enough and it was much easier to maintain a weight than it was to lose weight. Then he’d be thin enough, pretty enough, perfect enough for Courfeyrac and Courfeyrac wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. He could drop the lies and the pretenses because he didn’t actually like lying to Courfeyrac, who often asked him with a concerned look if he’d gotten enough to eat, if he were full. But Courfeyrac wouldn’t understand what was going on. He’d think there was a problem with the Jehan’s relationship with food because he wouldn’t understand that Jehan was still in control.

Cosette and Marius invited him and Courfeyrac to restaurants on double dates. Jehan always went prepared. He’d drink a glass or water or a cup of tea or maybe have a snack if he was particularly hungry before going to the restaurant. He looked for menu items that were baked or broiled or steamed instead of fried, and if he could control himself—and he could control himself, he was a master of self-control—he only looked at the salads. He rarely even bothered to look at what else the menu had to offer. He always ordered sauces and dressings on the side. If he could, he’d ask for a lunch portion instead of a dinner portion. When Courfeyrac would insist on dessert—and Courfeyrac always insisted on dessert, he had a sweet tooth—Jehan would insist that they split one. If he talked while they were eating the dessert, then Courfeyrac would inevitably eat most (if not all) of it.

By the end of January, his body weight was steadily dipping closer and closer double digits and he couldn’t be more proud of himself.

* * *

 

February wasn’t nearly so kind to him. Within the first week, he was having dizzy spells and he could barely manage his morning runs without stopping halfway through to catch his breath and wait for the black spots to stop dancing in his vision. He was exhausted and hungry all the time, and his stomach was grumbling near constantly, which made his constant excuses to his friends that no, he didn’t want to split a small meal because he had just eaten, rather moot.

He checked his proana blog multiple times a day, looking for the strength to keep this up. It was getting so hard. He wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t have enough control. He was weak. He was disgusting. He was fat. No wonder he couldn’t do this. He used to be able to do this. At his best as a teenager, at his most beautiful, he’d been down to 89 pounds. But he’d gotten weak and lazy since then. So he found message boards and wrote broken poems about how hard it was and sought tips and encouragements from the only people who understood him.

And in the second week of February, he broke.

He was alone at Courfeyrac’s apartment—he would have been fine at his own, he’d long since purged his house of anything he could binge on—but Courfeyrac had left out a lasagna on the counter when he stepped out to go pick up a textbook he’d left at Enjolras’s apartment and Jehan had forgotten how much he loved lasagna. And he was so tired and so hungry and and it smelled so good and Courfeyrac had barely touched it.

Before Jehan knew what he was doing, he had eaten nearly half the lasagna right out of the pan and his stomach was so full it hurt and he hated himself. He’d been doing so. Fucking. Well. And here he went and ruined it. All his hard work, all his vaunted self-control absolutely wasted because he was such a fat ass that he couldn’t even resist a fucking lasagna.

On his knees in the bathroom, he sobbed as he made himself throw it up. Over and over and over again, shaking with guilt that he gave in like this. Shaking with disgust because purging was absolutely awful and he was disgusting for having to resort to it. Hatred settled on his skin, pressing against him like thick air.

By the time Courfeyrac got home, Jehan had brushed his teeth and carefully erased any evidence that he spent nearly a half hour puking in the bathroom. When Courfeyrac saw the half-eaten lasagna on the counter, he smiled.

“If I’d known you liked lasagna so much,” he said. “I would have made it for you ages ago. I’ll make it every night if you want!”

Jehan assured his boyfriend that that wouldn’t be necessary.

He didn’t sleep that night. Instead he paid homage to the porcelain god in his bathroom, forcing him to puke until there was blood in his bile and he knew there was nothing left in him but stomach acid. He cried. He’d been doing so well. So well. But he went and fucked up it anyway because his body was selfish and wanted a fucking a lasagna. He felt an old, familiar tightness around his thighs. An old impulse beckoning him to cut and to punish. Blood penance to atone for his failure.

Jehan didn’t cry as he made the neat, even cuts on his legs and he didn’t cry as he cleaned himself up.

He was disgusting. He deserved this.

One day, he’d be better, he’d be thinner, he’d be perfect, and then he wouldn’t be forced to hurt himself this way.

* * *

 

Valentine’s day was only three days later and Jehan barely allowed himself to eat during those three days because he wanted to look his best for Courfeyrac that night. Two hundred calories the first day, only fifty the next, then four hundred, followed by a quick three mile run, on Valentine’s Day itself so he wouldn’t be too hungry for dinner and wouldn’t be fat and bloated when he and Courfeyrac would sleep together later that night.

It’d been weeks since he and Courfeyrac had had sex. They’d both been busy and Jehan’s desire for sex wasn’t as strong as it used to be. It’d been weeks since Courfeyrac had seen him with his clothes off and Jehan wanted to display all the hard work he’d been doing. He knew it wasn’t enough, yet—he wasn’t perfect yet—but he was getting there and Courfeyrac was always so supportive. Courfeyrac would give him the last push he needed to perfect his body.

Only it turned out Courfeyrac didn’t want to sleep with him that night. Jehan didn’t know why Courfeyrac kept pushing him away. He knew he wasn’t thin enough, but he wasn’t nearly so gluttonous as he was before. But on the couch in Courfeyrac’s apartment, every time he moved closer to Courfeyrac or tried to touch him or tried to kiss him, Courfeyrac pulled away.

Jehan was tired. He was exhausted. He didn’t have the energy to piece together why Courfeyrac suddenly hated him and he cried.

He was so fucking useless.

“Why are you crying?” Courfeyrac asked. He placed a hand on his back. Jehan wondered if Courfeyrac could feel his spine and his ribs. They were so prominent these days. Jehan was so proud of it.

“Why are you pushing me away? It’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t you love me?”

“Of course I love you, Jehan,” Courfeyrac said. “I just…have you looked at yourself?”

Jehan pulled away. “I knew it. I knew I was still too fat for you, Courfeyrac. I’ve been trying so hard, though. Can’t you see that?”

“Too fat…for me?” Courfeyrac said. “You’ve been torturing yourself like this for me?”

He sounded horrified. Jehan thought he would be pleased. “Of course,” he said. “I just—I wanted to be perfect for you.”

“Jehan, there’s hardly any of you left! I’m terrified you’ll crumble as soon as I touch you!”

“No, no, no,” he said. “I’m strong. You can touch me. Please touch me. I’m right here. I won’t crumble.”

Courfeyrac shook his head. “You’re killing yourself, Jehan. You’re abusing yourself!”

“How did you know about that?” Jehan asked. He bandaged the cuts on his legs well. They never bled through his pants.

“Know about…Jehan, are you…are you hurting yourself?” Courfeyrac asked. “Beyond the starving, I mean. Are you cutting yourself again? What are you doing?”

“It was only once,” he said. He knew Courfeyrac was angry at him. Courfeyrac would see how weak he was. Shit. He was screwing all of this up. “I screwed up, Courfeyrac, but it was only once! I needed—I needed it. I screwed up.”

“When you say you screwed up,” Courfeyrac said slowly, “are you talking about the cuts or about something else?”

“I shouldn’t have eaten that lasagna,” Jehan said. Tears welled in his eyes. He was so. Fucking. Useless.

“Were you punishing yourself for eating?”

“I had to.”

“Baby, no,” Courfeyrac says, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to do any of that. You especially didn’t have to do any of it for me. Fuck, Jehan, you didn’t have to do any of this!”

“I just wanted to lose weight.”

“Well, I think we can both agree that you did that,” Courfeyrac said. “But you’re still not eating!”

“I am eating.”

“How many calories did you eat today?” he demanded.

He shrank back from Courfeyrac’s anger and he spoke in a small voice. “I don’t know.”

“Bull shit,” Courfeyrac said. “I know you keep track in your poetry journal.”

His face flushed. Courfeyrac wasn’t supposed to know that. He wasn’t supposed to know how much work this was. He meant to make it look easy and then Courfeyrac would be proud of how strong he was. “I don’t know how much I had at dinner,” he said. The restaurant didn’t have caloric information on the menu. “But I had four hundred earlier.”

He decided not to mention his run, which should have burned off a good portion of those calories.

“And what about yesterday?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me!”

“Fifty,” Jehan said in a small voice.

Courfeyrac’s eyes bugged. “Fifty? Fifty, Jehan? How are you even still standing?”

“Thin is strong,” Jehan said, repeating one of the many affirmations he’d taught himself. “I am strong.”

“This isn’t thin,” Courfeyrac said. “This is deadly! This is lethal!”

Jehan shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. Don’t you see how fat I still am?”

“What are you talking about? You are skin and bones!”

Jehan lifted his shirt so he could pinch at the flab around his gut. “Do you not see this? This is disgusting!”

Courfeyrac looked furious. “That’s your skin, you fool! That’s what everyone’s body does! Your skin is meant to move like that!” He lifts his own shirt and pinches at his skin. “See? Shit, Jehan, if you think you’re fat than you must think I’m a fucking whale!”

“No,” Jehan said. “No, you’re perfect. You’re beautiful. I just wanted to be that perfect for you.”

“Jehan, baby, you’ve always been perfect to me,” he said. He had tears in his own eyes and he pulled his phone out of his pocket and held up the lock screen, which was a picture of Jehan taken from over the summer. His face was round and lightly tanned. His eyes didn’t look sunken and his hair was shining. His eyes and his hair looked okay, but for the most part, Jehan thought he resembled a manatee. “This is my favorite picture of you,” he said. “This. When you were happy and you were healthy, Jehan! That’s all I wanted from you! I’ve been worried sick about you for months now and I didn’t know what to say to you!”

“How can you even look at that?” Jehan asked. “I look disgusting—that can’t possibly be your favorite picture of me.”

Courfeyrac jerked the phone back as Jehan had to reach for it, as though he understood that Jehan wanted nothing more than to erase that photograph. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop putting words in my mouth. Stop telling me what I love about you. Stop using me as a weapon against yourself, Jehan! I never wanted you to do this to yourself! I want you to be the way you were—back when you smiled and you laughed at my stupid jokes and you wrote poetry instead of counting calories! I want my boyfriend back! All of him—but you keep taking him away from me!”

A sob caught in Jehan’s throat. He couldn’t lose Courfeyrac. He could handle everyone else in the world walking away from him, but he couldn’t lose Courfeyrac. “I don’t know how to stop anymore!”

He didn’t realize he was shaking until Courfeyrac gathered him into his arms. Courfeyrac touched him like he was afraid he might snap him in half, and that made Jehan sob harder.

Courfeyrac shushed him and petted at his hair and rocked him back and forth. “I’ll help you,” he promised. “I’ll be there every step of the way, okay? I know this is scary, I know it is, and I’m scared too, but I love you, baby, and you’re not in this alone. We’ll find out what we need to do to get you healthy again, Jehan, and we’ll do it together. Whatever it takes.”

* * *

 

The end of February and into March saw Jehan back in therapy and Courfeyrac went with him to a specialist at the hospital to get a specialized dietary plan. The new eating regimen made him hate himself. It made him feel thick and fat and lethargic and it usually took him more than hour to make it through each meal. Courfeyrac—usually accompanied by one or more of their friends—would stay with him and slowly pick at his own food while Jehan ate. He wouldn’t finish his own meals until he was certain that Jehan had met his daily calorie count.

It felt wrong trying to add calories instead of cutting them out.

Courfeyrac was in charge of his record keeping. He was the one who made sure Jehan ate as much as he was supposed to each day because Jehan knew if he was in charge of that, he’d get too caught up on the calories and the temptation to start cutting back would be too strong. He trusted Courfeyrac to keep him on the right track.

And Courfeyrac was unyielding. Jehan thought he must have gotten tips from someone along the line or maybe he just always watched Jehan more than Jehan knew, but he was aware of all of Jehan’s tricks. He made sure that food didn’t get ruined by salt or other spices so that Jehan would have an excuse not to eat. He made sure that the food didn’t just get smashed up on his plate. He made sure that Jehan didn’t brush it onto the floor or throw it away or puke it up behind closed doors. And sometimes Jehan hated him for it. Sometimes he sobbed and he threw pillows at Courfeyrac and demanded to know why Courfeyrac hated him, why Courfeyrac was trying to make him fat and useless and ugly.

Courfeyrac took it all in stride.

On the rare occasions that Courfeyrac needed some time and some space to himself—Courfeyrac and Jehan’s therapist made certain that Jehan understood that Courfeyrac wasn’t trying to punish him and wasn’t trying to break up with him, but that Courfeyrac’s emotional and mental well-being was important and if that meant he needed to spend a night away from Jehan, then Jehan needed to accept that—Jehan usually ended up in the company of one or more of his friends. He had quiet conversations with Bahorel, who told him he’d nearly had to be hospitalized when he was on his high school wrestling team because he was destroying himself trying to drop weight classes. Grantaire confided his own poor history with food and starvation and Jehan understood what it felt like to deny yourself something good because you didn’t think you deserved it. Feuilly confessed to days without food in various foster homes and the fear he felt when he watched Jehan start to deny himself something that Feuilly could never take for granted.

And there were lighter conversations. Discussions about art and beauty with Grantaire and Feuilly. Dialogs about body positivity and being healthy at any size with Cosette. Jokes and laughter and learning to deal with mental illness with Joly and Bossuet. Debates about philosophy and literature with Combeferre and taking Marius’s side on political debates, just to see how red Enjolras’s face would get before he snapped.

Jehan threw out his old moleskin notebooks that were filled with self-hatred and food lists and calories and bought new ones that he could fill with poetry and beauty. He started writing again in earnest, trying to find the words to describe a love of self that was still a little elusive to him, but he was trying and that’s what Courfeyrac told him mattered the most.

By April, Jehan was back to a healthy body weight. He was still thinner and lighter than he was back in November, but he was healthy and his friends were no longer afraid that he was going to break in half whenever he was accidentally jostled in a crowd. Some days were still hard. Some days it was hard not to see food and his appetite as his enemy and on those days, he appreciated having Courfeyrac for company. Courfeyrac who didn’t nag or harass or pressure him into eating everything that was on his plate. Courfeyrac who gently cajoled him into taking one more bite and told him that he was stronger than his mind. Courfeyrac who, when Jehan felt tears press against his eyelids and confessed that he didn’t think Courfeyrac could still love him if he gained even one more pound, assured him that his love was constant and unchanging.

Jehan knew that, in the end, what really mattered was his ability to love and accept himself, but he wasn’t there yet. He still had work to do. And until he did, it was enough to know that he always had Courfeyrac to rely on.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe one day I'll stop being such a jerk to my favorite characters, but until then, come say hello on [tumblr ](http://kingesstropolis.tumblr.com)


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